"If animals did not exist, the nature of man would be even more incomprehensible"

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Make It Simple, Stupid: Richard L. Hansen, at slate.com, has an article detailing why congress should pass legislation that makes voter registration automatic. The county-by-county, semiannual registration process is one of the stupidities of the election format in the U.S., which gives rise to immense controversy and numerous court battles, when instead, it could be solved with the cooperation of the post office and the Census Bureau:

The solution is to take the job of voter registration for federal elections out of the hands of third parties (and out of the hands of the counties and states) and give it to the federal government. The Constitution grants Congress wide authority over congressional elections. The next president should propose legislation to have the Census Bureau, when it conducts the 2010 census, also register all eligible voters who wish to be registered for future federal elections. High-school seniors could be signed up as well so that they would be registered to vote on their 18th birthday. When people submit change-of-address cards to the post office, election officials would also change their registration information.

This change would eliminate most voter registration fraud. Government employees would not have an incentive to pad registration lists with additional people in order to keep their jobs. The system would also eliminate the need for matches between state databases, a problem that has proved so troublesome because of the bad quality of the data. The federal government could assign each person a unique voter-identification number, which would remain the same regardless of where the voter moves. The unique ID would prevent people from voting in two jurisdictions, such as snowbirds who might be tempted to vote in Florida and New York. States would not have to use the system for their state and local elections, but most would choose to do so because of the cost savings.